2014 Spring Cleaining
Dr. Ysaye Barnwell, revered singer-composer formerly with Sweet Honey in the Rock, came to East Texas to sing with us and celebrate the Ancestors
2014 Spring Cleaining
Dr. Ysaye Barnwell, revered singer-composer formerly with Sweet Honey in the Rock, came to East Texas to sing with us and celebrate the Ancestors
Producers and Crew
CHINA GALLAND
PRODUCER / WRITER
Seen here with Doris Vittatoe co-collaborator in the struggle to open Love Cemetery, China Galland is an award-winning author, speaker, university lecturer, and former wilderness guide. Recipient of the 2010 “Courage of Conscience Award” from the Peace Abbey presented by the Harvard Foundation on the campus at Harvard University, and a Hedgebrook Writers Invitational Residency on Whidbey Island, WA, Galland is also a Professor in Residence at the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is a member of the national Alliance for Truth and Racial Reconciliation. Her book on Love was the genesis of this documentary. Love is her sixth non-fiction book to be published.
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ALEXIS YANCEY
CO-PRODUCER
Alexis Yancey is an award-winning television producer who is owner and executive producer of Alexis Yancey Productions, based in Dallas, Texas. Alexis Yancey Productions produces news, documentaries and newsmagazine segments, talk show interviews and segments, features, stories, shows, live shots, television and radio ads and public service announcements.Clients include CBS News, CNN, Oprah, Dr. Phil, Donahue, PBS affiliate KERA-TV, The Emmitt Zone Show with Emmitt Smith, Fox News Edge, Judge Alex, Hispanics Today and Teleworks’ Millennium Mark: A Journey of Change, which was the 2000 Questar Awards Grand Prize Winner for Best of Show & Broadcast Campaigns.
BEN GALLAND
DIRECTOR / EDITOR
Ben Galland is an award-winning director who owns and operates Oceanic Productions in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has directed documentaries, short films and music videos for clients such as PBS, Fox, Warner Brothers, Current TV and others. In 2002, Vertical Frontier won "Best Climbing FIlm" at the BANFF International Mountain film festival which he Co-Produced and Edited. In 2004, Galland won "Best Story" at the X-Dance film festival in Park City, Utah for Skating through the Ashes which he directed and edited.
ALDO BILLINGSLEA
CO-PRODUCER
LILLIAN BENSON
CONSULTING EDITOR
As the editor of two episodes of the milestone PBS series Eyes on the Prize II (1990), Lillian Benson was part of a dynamic group of filmmakers who changed how the public perceived African-American history — and how the film and television industry regarded African-American documentarians. She continues to create notable work today. She also embodies the profession’s highest personal and collegial standards, the recognition of which is reflected by her selection as the 2017 recipient of the Motion Picture Editors Guild’s 2017 Fellowship and Service Award.
BARRY OPPER
PRODUCER
At Santa Clara University Aldo Billingslea teaches American Theatre from the Black Perspective, a seminar on August Wilson, Acting for Non Majors, Acting, Acting Styles: Shakespeare, and Acting for the Camera. He has acted and directed at theater companies around the country, including the American Conservatory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Magic Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Portland Repertory Theatre, Theatre Three in Dallas, InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, San Diego's Old Globe Theater, to name a few
Barry Opper is a long-time peace and civil rights activist. In his work life he has produced and/or written eleven feature films, two series for episodic television, some thirty stage plays and multiple other projects. His screenplay Chemistry will be produced in 2024 by him and Cary Brokaw. Recently Barry produced a feature length documentary entitled Slingshot about a life-saving device bringing clean water to under-served communities around the world. He spent several years in West Africa teaching school in a fifty hut upcountry village and later working on his award winning documentary a few hundred miles from this tiny village in Liberia.